May 31, 2011

But I think it is news when a politician mishandles his internet communications. Minor news, but worth noting.

And it's really news — serious news — if either: 1. the internet accounts of a politician have been hacked in an effort to destroy the man, or 2. the politician makes the false statement that he has been victimized by a crime. One or the other has occurred in this case (unless I'm failing to see some other option).

Should we all be closing our Twitter accounts lest some devious prankster destroy our reputation? Or has Weiner — for his own purposes — maligned Twitter's business and undermined the Twitter-user's sense of security? I want to know!

AND: If Weiner is lying about his accounts getting hacked, he could be sued by Twitter (and the other companies) for defamation.

This morning, looking at a new NYT article, I thought of another option. This article goes on at length about what a prolific tweeter Weiner has been and how clever his Tweets are.

His first real Twitter post used a play on the title of Ms. Palin’s book to declare his intentions to embrace the new medium: “Going rouge over here. Starting to twitter w/o telling my minders. But what if nobody hears me? Did it happen.”

Going "rouge"? You'd think a man whose name could be misspelled to be the name of a sausage would be more careful. But he has been going rouge these last few days.

The funny thing is, the innocent explanation for what happened requires me to suspect that his first post was a something of a lie. The innocent explanation is: He doesn't write his own tweets. He's got a ghost-tweeter.

Maybe because he's got some cheeky Harvard Lampoon-type guy tapping out the wisecracks.

He often posts several messages a day... Many are about national politics, with cheeky hashtags, like “Newt running for Prez. Mitt running from Mitt. Where to begin? #TargetRichEnvironment.” And there was “Ok let’s start with Newt. He’s the brains of the field, right? #TallestPygmy.”

So terribly clever and edgy. Why does a Congressman have time for that? Why does a Congressman have a mind for that?

The number of members of Congress who are on Twitter has more than doubled, to more than 400, since the start of this year, but the actual involvement of those members in the crafting of their messages varies widely.

So who's writing all that junk?

Mr. Weiner, a technophile, has clearly considered the role of Twitter in honing his public image, and he said in an interview earlier this month that while his Twitter stream “is usually something about the national conversation or a five- or 10-degree pivot from the national conversation,” his Twitter personality is all him.

So he doesn't want to admit he's not writing it. You know, there's another meaning to the word "hack." There are hack writers. It's normally a noun, but I'm sure I'm not the first person to say it could work as a verb.

My Twitter account was hacked could mean: The hack writer I hired wrote the tweet.

To use this explanation, Weiner would have to concede that his clever tweets were not — or not always — his. I note that he could use this explanation even if it isn't true. Get some 21-year-old fall guy to say he got drunk and let his crush on that cute girl in Seattle go to his head.

I don't think you're taking the congressman's massive ego into account here. While he might have an aide writing boilerplate tweets about the political topic of the day, the ones in this case are of a far more localized nature (as in, who cares what time it is in Seattle?). If someone else was posting such banal and non-essential tweets under Weiner's name because they had authorization to do so by the congressman, it should be easy for him to ID that person and let the public know they've been fired.

More likely, and even if some aide did have tweeting privleges under Anthony's name, he enjoyed having his ego digitally stroked by an impressionable college student with impressive assets, and tweeted the photo to try and make his own impression (he does seem to be the type who would believe a woman would be impressed by the cleverness of a shot of Anthony's wiener, since the guy no doubt has had to put up with 40-plus years of people associating the name and the appendage).

Plausible on the surface given the parallel to the Edwards-Hunter situtaion. However once you start thinking it through it's as lame as his claim to being hacked.

IIRC impersonating a Congressman is felony right?

Unlike Edwards Congressman Hot Dog doesn't have enough scratch to compensate somebody for taking that fall, plus can you imagine the clout you'd have being a paternity test away from destroying a Presidency?

I'm very interested in the character and psychological makeup of Anthony Weiner. He's the point man for the Dem Party and as such serves a great example of their leadership. I unbderstand the need for GM, retread, etc. to be dominated and abused by politicians, but why do they choose the people they choose? It's a fascinating subject.

"G Joubert said...Not a bad theory. But who is in the picture? Weiner or not? Does the co-ed in Seattle thinks she's tweeting with Weiner or with the hired help?"

It's a idiotic theory. To espouse it you first have make the leap that Weiner used "hacked" as a verb in a way that has never been used...and then all his people did too. In a way that makes NO SENSE in context.

Nice attempt at deflection, garage, but in the end it wasn't conservatives that made Weiner's wiener a public issue. If he didn't want people talking about his shlong, he shouldn't be streaming it out over the net. Trying to blame us for talking about it is nearly as juvenile as posting the pic in the first place.

It's a idiotic theory. To espouse it you first have make the leap that Weiner used "hacked" as a verb in a way that has never been used...and then all his people did too. In a way that makes NO SENSE in context.

I think Ann takes it for granted Weiner will lie. The theory is not so much innocent as plausible.

"Get some 21-year-old fall guy to say he got drunk and let his crush on that cute girl in Seattle go to his head."

Except that Twitter knows WHERE the tweets were made from ... and it was most likely from inside Anthony Weiner's own home. So, that explanation won't wash since he's been at home with his wife alone all weekend.

Weiner may very well find a fall guy to take his blame. After all, John Edwards found one and paid that fall guy hundreds of thousands of dollars. For every fawning tween "following" Anthony Weiner, there's a fawning fall guy too ... ready to fall on their sword for the fame and power he represents and whatever cash they can get out of the deal.

So, this explanation may well be soon proffered, but there will never be any evidence presented in the form of the IP address logs from Twitter and yfrog.

Because those logs would most likely show that the tweets were sent from inside Anthony Weiener's house ... from behind is router very late at night.

A smart IT worker at Twitter or yfrog would preserve those logs for just the right moment and then sell them to the news media AFTER Mr. Weiner has put forward his fake fall guy.

Why, I bet Fox News would pay six figures for the person who can supply those IP address logs.

A goldmine awaits the intelligent log jockey.

In fact, one may already be in possession of those logs just waiting for Mr. Weiner to offer this very excuse.

A smart IT worker would already have the evidence in hand ... waiting.

Yeah, I imagine that if Scott Walker had been caught sending pictures of his dick around the internets, garage would be completely uninterested. Prolly wouldn't post a single comment here about it. Cause, you know, cocks are gross and stuff and if you talk about a a politician sending dick pics around, that means you're a fag or something.

"I am now following Weiner on Twitter, so if he flashes a matching ass-shot, I'll be sure to post it for you."

Every Democrat is being followed. EVERY. ONE. OF. THEM.

Everything they Tweet, every post they make to Facebook, every email that gets sent out automatically without their knowledge when they infect their laptops looking at porn. EVERYTHING is being copied and logged.

It's all logged with an IP address that leads right back to their location - inside their homes and inside their offices.

They created this machine. And now, they'll discover the full power of this fully operational station.

We have no intention of allowing corrupt Democrat office holders to lead lives of sexual predation, feasting on our young daughters as they turn America asunder and strip us of our God-given rights codified in the United States Constitution.

They will not enjoy their tenure in public office for one moment, and if they make ONE MISTAKE we will do everything in our power to destroy them and everything they care about.

"The Weinergate facts, as we so far know them: on May 28, @RepWeiner, the verified Twitter account of US Congressman Anthony Weiner (D-NY), posted a tweet of a y.frog photo of a slightly-built white male straining to pitch a pup tent in a pair of grey Hanes Underoos. Within seconds, Congressman Weiner arrived at the scene of the cybercrime and instantly recognized it as the work of a hacker who had simultaneously broken into his Twitter, Facebook and y.frog accounts. Working quickly, and without regard to his own safety, Congressman Weiner used his elite law school-honed internet security coding skills to wrest back control of his accounts, delete the offending tweet and photo, as well as unfollow a Seattle coed to whom it was sent. His Twitter perimeter once again secured, the intrepid Congressmen sent out a new tweet explaining how he was victimized by an Internet criminal mastermind."

1. Not all conservatives are men2. Nobody actually cares about the fact that you are straight3. The pains you are going through to tell us all how very, very straight you are...well, let's just say it's a red flag.

Weiner is quick witted and has an excellent sense of humor. I don't share his political views, but he's funny and likable. The twitter quips sound like him. I suppose it's possible that he has an aide with a similar and even better sense of humor to whom he has delegated that responsibility. OK, stranger things have happened, but it does seem far fetched. A ghost writer for a twitter account feels vaguely fraudulent and way too calculated. On the other hand, never underestimate either phoniness or horniness of people in public life.

I'm not buying that a ghostwriter did this. That is in no way a likely plausible explanation. Someone hired (or unpaid but trusted) to tweet for the weiner would not send lewd pictures in his name to unknown 21 year old females.

If Weiner is lying about his accounts getting hacked, he could be sued by Twitter (and the other companies) for defamation.

How would that work?

By which I mean, where's the defamation of Twitter?

Anyone's account on pretty much any service can get "hacked"* if they have a bad password or someone gets access to the machine they log in from; this is not a reflection on Twitter as a company in any way.

(* Random guessing of a bad password is about the least useful use of "hacked" ever, short of the idea that your Facebook account was "hacked" if you opened a webpage that faked a "like" click but never compromised your account credentials or session in any way.)

And the statement is "Going rouge over here. Starting to twitter w/o telling my minders." He's breaking free of his "minders," which is what "going rogue" means. Why would he bring in "rouge," which would have to do with wearing makeup or actually being like Sarah Palin, with the added downside of suggesting Communism?

Most likely the Penis-o-Gram was in response to a spicy photo from Miss Washington not the opening gambit. This whole affair would benefit from context. It is doubtless much rougher than what we know now.

First AA notes the horror on display during the interview (it wasn't an interview) between Meghan Kelly and Anthony Weiner. They both come off looking like asses. So why is it that now Ann thinks it's this giant leap to go from there to twittering a photo of his erection? Not to mention all the other juvenile things he twitters (comments on etc)? Did she even watch the interview? If she had, 'stately' is not one adjective that would have come to mind. I don't know, it's just that if you watch that so-called ambition/aggression-fest on Fox, the things you then find out that he's been twittering should not be that surprising.

I think of all the guesses that have been posted on here, Freeman Hunt's prediction of what could happen (and therefore what has happened) rings truest to me.

Well they don't. What they do want to talk about though is his lewd nature, electronic infidelity and the mainstream media's apparent willingness to gladly go along with his cover-up--something they'd never do if a married Republican was emailing crotch shots to college coeds on the other side of the country.